Andre M. reviewed Red Dead Redemption 2

The most interesting thing about this game is how openly it fights its own genre. It's an open world power fantasy that spends sixty hours telling you the power fantasy is a lie and the man having it is dying.

That tension is where all the value is. It's also why the gameplay frustrates people — you are given a magnificent toybox and then repeatedly told, by the mission design, that you are not allowed to play with it. Some of that is deliberate. A lot of it is just old-fashioned scripting that Rockstar hasn't moved past since the PS2.

An A because I think the friction between what it wants to say and what it lets you do is unresolved rather than intentional. When it works it's the best thing in the medium. When it doesn't you are riding a horse at a fixed speed behind a man who is talking.